Before receiving a review copy of Wicked Mountain I hadn’t even heard of King Of The Tramps’ hometown, Auburn, Iowa. It’s apparently a ‘suburb’ of Carroll, Iowa, which is to say it must be vanishingly small–the sort of Iowa town that barely exists and keeps getting smaller. Completely irrelevant to this review, but it’s worth visiting www.auburniowa.net, whose homepage is dominated by a slideshow of a town completely devoid of human habitation. The town motto should be “Auburn: Park Wherever You Like.” It’s a place where you make your own entertainment or go quietly mad.
Album reviews
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Coolzey – Hit Factory
The only reason Coolzey isn’t the most productive Iowa musician is that Sam Locke Ward has whatever’s the pop songwriting equivalent of Tourette Syndrome. Still, I think he may have the edge on Sam for stylistic range. One moment he’s an indie rocker, the next he’s a soul singer and then he’s some sort of goofy corn field Kanye West.
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Album Review: Samuel Locke Ward – In Case You Have Doubt
Iowa City’s under-employed over-achiever Sam Locke Ward is back with the 6th installment of his year-long “album a month” project, proving once again that he must not sleep in order to have the time to be this prolific. This latest album highlights his obsession with R Stevie Moore and The Beach Boys, not as imitation but as homage. Sam’s songwriting process is akin to what happens to obsessive Twitterers and Facebookers: If you write all the time, you increase in fluency and shorten the distance between the ideas in your head and their manifestations in the real world.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: The Lonelyhearts – Years in the Great Interior
People who believe too much in the primacy of words sometimes lose touch with the music, but The Lonelyhearts keep things well in balance.
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Album Review: Emperors Club – Killer Companions
The full-length debut from Emperors Club, Killer Companion, is a surprisingly opulent pop record. At its core, it is wiry and ready to rock, but with all the glorious harmonies, subtle keyboard lines and intertwining guitar work, the sonic palette is as rich as the emotional one.
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Album Review: Huge Lewis – Ascending Into Heaven
“I have swallowed the sky/through only a straw”—the 56-second opener of Ascending Into Heaven is a quiet moment of organ and silly psychedelic lyrics that ends without resolving to the tonic. It gives no clue to the sloppy, unhinged pop songs that follow it. The rest of the songs make me think of middle period Pavement, but where Pavement grooves, Huge Lewis lurches and yelps.
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Album Review: Raw Mojo – Brickbat Theory
Raw Mojo is a rock band, full stop. Not to be reductive about what Raw Mojo does, but there’s something really basic and elemental about what they do. Hard hitting drums, loud fuzz guitars fused tightly to a deep bass into 10 strings of fury. Lyrics that don’t try very hard for profundity
Posted inAlbum Reviews, Arts & Entertainment
Album Review: Foul Tip – Heaven Now
Reviewing the latest EP from Foul Tip is, well, sort of a challenge. The duo’s second release, Heaven Now, has a bit of an identity crisis. Four of the cuts on the cassette are propulsive, evocative chunks of post-punk and three of the tracks are goofy, but still mostly hard hitting. However, two of the songs are so successful, it really doesn’t bear mentioning the remaining five in such a short write-up.
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Album Review: Dana T – {Your Name}
The latest from Dana Telsrow (a.k.a. Dana T) is a six-song collection of mostly effective digital-baroque-funk (consider that genre term coined). The University of Iowa student has has enhanced his already dense compositions on {Your Name} with a horde of horn players whose work vacillates between classically inspired baroque-pop trills and funky blasts and stabs.
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Album Review: Daddy – Songs About Prostitutes
The first time I encountered the man now known as “Daddy” was at a Kickass Tarantulas show at the old Gabe’s. Dressed in a Speedo, he was rolling around in the cigarette butts, spilled beer, and broken glass in front of the stage, bellowing like a wounded wildebeest. Whilst living in Iowa City he performed in various guises, ending up founding and fronting the legendary Family Van.
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Album Review: Steve Grismore Trio – Bésame Mucho!
Steve Grismore is a guy who has had a huge influence on jazz in Iowa City, being a lecturer in the University Department of Music and co-founder of the Iowa City Jazz Festival. But above all, Grismore is a jazz guitarist, and Bésame Mucho! is his latest CD release, performing with organist Sam Salamone and drummer John Kizilarmut. To any jazz-head there’s an immediate, strong connection between this trio’s instrumentation and the work of Jimmy Smith, the famously funky Hammond organ player, whose 1960s trio and quartet records on Blue Note Records defined a certain cool, funky sound.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Samuel Locke Ward – Major Surgery at Discount Rates
Major Surgery at Discount Rates finds Samuel Locke Ward in full power pop mode. After some eerie organ pulses, “Uninspired” leaps off the starting line.
